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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   38486 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 5, 2023

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The problem is precisely people in the local council thinking their right to their property includes their right to, say, prohibit the construction of a house in front of their own that would block their views (etc).

Outside of hyper contractualist ancapistan where things like rights to a view are priced, sold and bundled as contracts and liens attached to properties, the local council being the community consensus decision making group for balancing overlapping property interests seems reasonable. Local governments can be wildly corrupt and not follow their own rules (see #barnlaw) but the principle is quite sane.

The principle at first glance seems 'sane' but something has clearly got to change in Britain, we simply cannot go on like this. In practice, 'community decision making' means 'elderly home-owner decision making' which in turn in practice means 'sorry you can't open a restaurant because Doris might have to queue in traffic for two minutes to go to bridge'. If these committees were composed of people who dispassionately analyse the costs and benefits it would be fine, but they by and large are not.

Costs and benefits to whom? Why are the benefits to a homeowner who has a long term vested interest in their community (going to bridge) who will bear the costs of increased traffic something you think should be valued lower than a business (are they even property owners or non-permanent tenants?) catering to the kind of people who don't care enough to participate in local politics (or even non-residents). As a general rule, low level politics are dominated by people who care and people who show up.

Benefits to the entire are and indeed to the nation, not just to one small section of the community. And as other who have pointed out, it's only time-rich pensioners with nothing better to do who have the time to turn up to such things and so their influence is outsized. The problem is that planning has implications for the entire region or nation, so deciding everything at the local level means that considerations of those benefits gets lost. One project won't decrease rents much in a partiuclar neighbourhood, but if everyone takes that attitude then nothing ever gets built and we are where we are today with thirteen years of stagnant productivity growth. Something's got to give.

catering to the kind of people who don't care enough to participate in local politics

Or rather, people who work for a living and don't have time for a second job participating in local politics.

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